Chapter 22

[Yes. I got the chapter out.]

"Well Selim, are you still enjoying your travels?"

"Yes Mother." Pride nodded, even though they were on the phone, and she wouldn't see. "We went to the future. Aerugo is going to make some sort of underwater town in the ocean."

"Oh my. Do you know how far in the future that's going to be?"

Pride frowned. "Hold on. Lilly! What year is it for you?!"

Lilly poked her head into the hall with a frown. A moment later, Pride turned back to the phone.

"About a hundred years."

"Oh, still a long way to go then."

In a sense. Pride glanced around the hall. Empty. "The Doctor does keep placing all these restrictions I wish she didn't though. And we picked up a new person in the future. She's annoying."

"Now don't give her too hard of a time Selim. I'm sure this is all very new for her, and you had a hard time adjusting too."

"I did better than her."

Lilly was just so human about everything.

"Would it feel better if you told me about it?" Mrs. Bradley asked.

The Doctor passed Pride in the hall before he could answer. "We're going back to the mall when you're done," she told him.

He didn't have to ask which mall. Presumably, she was taking them to the one about the size of a planet they'd been to on his last visit.

"Maybe. But I should go soon," he told Mrs. Bradley. "The Doctor's taking us to get supplies."

"Yes . . . that would be a good idea." She didn't sound pleased though. "Goodbye Selim."

"I'll call you again soon Mother," he promised.

Then he hung up, grabbed his crutch, and joined the Doctor and Lilly in the control room as the Doctor explained what they were doing. She flung the doors open into an unfamiliar section of the shopping center.

"Ah. This is the wrong area."

"What now?" Lilly asked.

"Let's look around. I'm sure there's still plenty of stuff. If we want to go the section I was aiming for later, we can always use the teleport."

"I'm walking," Pride said.

"You've only got one good leg," Lilly pointed out.

"I'm walking."

The first stop they made was to get dinner. Was it dinner? A meal of some sort anyway. Then the Doctor wrote herself into a magic show and the other two were left to their own devices for a while.

Looking at the nearby stores, Pride opted to get ice-cream. It went well, despite Lilly following and getting in line behind him, until it was time to get his order. He was only using his crutch with one hand. That gave him a free hand to grab his sundae. But someone still came over, offering to help, and reaching for the bowl without waiting for an answer.

Pride knew these types of people existed in theory, but he didn't have to deal with them much before. He just had the types who assumed children couldn't do anything.

"I'm fine, back off!"

He put all his weight on his good leg and raised the crutch at the man, who backed off in alarm. He heard some muttering from other people nearby as well.

"Pride!" Lilly admonished, sliding between him and the man. "I'm sorry about him." Pride turned and headed for a table. Let Lilly deal with apologizing if it meant so much to her. "I know, I know. He can be a bit temperamental. I'll handle it."

They exchanged a few more words, but Pride didn't catch anymore. Lilly swiped what looked like a milkshake off the counter and followed him just as he sat down.

"You can't just hit people with your crutch," she hissed.

"You're right. I couldn't have hit him."

He started eating, waiting for it to click.

"Oh."

There it was. He had that restrictor the Doctor had put in him. He couldn't have actually hurt the man. But as the man hadn't known that, it had done wonders in making him back off.

For a little while after that, they sat in silence. And that was a relief. So it wasn't particularly when she spoke again.

"You mentioned someone named Wrath earlier?"

"My sibling."

"You wouldn't happen to have six siblings, would you?"

Pride slowed his eating. "Yes." But how had she known?

"And the others would be named Greed, Sloth . . . Lust . . . er. . ."

"Envy and Gluttony," Pride filled in impatiently. "Now, how did you know?"

"The seven deadly sins, right? I mean, siblings named Pride and Wrath seems like a pretty big coincidence otherwise. They did say pride was the one you can't get rid of," she added ruefully.

"Well I wish they'd stop trying," Pride said, just as annoyed.

"So where are your siblings?"

Pride shut up, and stared at his ice-cream, lowering the spoon for a moment. "They're dead now. It's just me."

"Oh. Sorry."

Lilly should be apologizing, but not for that. He shrugged, even if it felt a little forced.

"I never paid much attention to them while they were alive. I don't see why it should matter now."

Lilly took a deep breath, as if he was the one who was difficult to deal with. "Maybe you don't see, but you seem to miss them now. I think . . . there's probably a difference between being away from people because you can, and being away from people because they're dead."

Pride hit his ice-cream with a spoon. Everything she said was obvious, but it wasn't a perspective he had. And yet, was she onto something? When they were alive, he'd been sort of fond of Lust and Wrath. But the others were hopeless. They constantly needed to be watched, and in Greed's case constantly betrayed them. They seemed better at creating more work than less. Yet here he was, acting all sad about their deaths. And he certainly thought of them often, and spent years trying to figure out if he was definitely the last one. He didn't want to be the last.

"You going to eat that or just mash it up?"

Pride blinked a few times, refocusing. Right. His ice-cream was looking very flat.

"Actually, I was going to dump it on your head."

[The characters don't usually seem aware of the seven deadly sins. Out of story that's because of the language barrier. If that's the case in story as well, the TARDIS is the universal translator, there is no language barrier. If that's not the in story reason, we'll just assume the seven deadly sins became a more prevalent concept in the past 100 years.]